Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent

Patent-eligibility of Plants in Europe

The patent-eligibility of plants has been unsettled at the European Patent Office for some 20 years. Article 53(b) EPC prohibits the patenting of plant varieties and essentially biological processes for the production of plants. When other requirements such as novelty and inventive step are met, this causes few problems for transgenic plants modified by biotechnological methods, but it has been...

Legal Validity Metrics for Patent Offices and Law Firms e Recycling of Patent Court Appeal Decisions for Quality Management

In all relevant patent systems an adversely affected party has the possibility to appeal the patent office’s decision in front of a patent court or Board of Appeal (BoA). Within a European context, the EPO is, in a way, even engaging in de facto competition with national patent offices. As an example, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) provides quasi identical patent products and off...

Patenting of plant varieties and plant breeding methods.

This article considers the relationship between patenting and plant variety rights protection, through a detailed analysis of the recent determination by the Extended Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office that methods for breeding broccoli and tomatoes were not patentable. It concludes that the right to patent agricultural innovations is increasingly located within a political context.

United States Patent and Trademark Office ____________ before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Software Patents Pending?

Recent twin decisions of the European Patent Office's Technical Board of Appeal have shifted its stance on software patents significantly. In this paper, I explore the background to this shift and suggest that the mindset to software patents enshrined in the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS) is already being introduced ahead of formal amendment of the Europ...